The Deadlift of Masculinity

The deadlift is the most important exercise you can do. It’s one, simple movement, and it works out more muscle groups to exhaustion than any other exercise. If you only did deadlifts once a week for the rest of your life, you would be in better shape than all the Guidos who hang around the cable crossover machine like it’s a drunk Snooki. Even better, deadlifts are the best thing you can do for your testosterone levels other than inject actual testosterone (or buy a Testarossa and call it a “Testosterossa”). The deadlift is like a Total Gym that actually works and doesn’t make you look like a definite homosexual.
It’s remarkable, really, that one exercise provides all the health benefits your body needs, especially when you consider the complexity of the human body. The human body is so complex, in fact, that up until recently humans just assumed God created it. Some anthropologists posit that we even invented God, and indeed the concept of supernaturalism, to explain our physical complexity. Of course, more than 50 percent of people in the Western world still think that God is the reason our bodies are complex, which just goes to show you that our physical complexity pales in comparison to our psychological complexity.

One aspect of this psychological complexity, at least in men, is masculinity. It’s a concept that may not even be a concept because it escapes a pithy definition, or any definition at all. From watching Humphrey Bogart movies, we at least know it involves integrity, confidence (especially sexual confidence), psychological identity, and being in touch with reality. There are more attributes of masculinity I may be missing, so to drive home the point, let’s remind ourselves that this is masculinity:

“hey world, be nice”

And this isn’t masculinity:

“be nice to me, world”

Similar to how deadlifts affect the human body, there’s a way to improve your masculinity at its core in one, simple movement: Treat every girl like she’s your girl.

If you fully internalize the obvious sexual difference between guys and girls and you treat every girl accordingly, this one mindset works out all the muscles of masculinity. It may involve complimenting girls, teasing girls, allowing girls to light you up, recognizing when girls like you (which is all the time) and calling them on it, or even just assuming all girls are innately talented at being barefoot and making sandwiches.

It builds confidence, it teaches you the expression of sexual desire is okay, it forces you to question what you want out of interactions with girls and so forces you to solidify your identity, and nothing keeps you in touch with reality, and your ability to observe yourself for who you are in reality, than getting shut down by a girl or saying something on either end of the wussy-asshole spectrum.
If you’re friends with a lot of girls, or haven’t been on a date in a while, or you simply do not delight in the fact that girls are everywhere, then you probably don’t have much masculinity. You may, but probably not. If you do not do deadlifts, then you’re probably not in shape. You may be, but probably not.

It doesn’t matter how pretty or ugly the girl is, or whether she’s forty pounds or four hundred pounds, she’s your girl. Well, maybe not if her self-esteem is so low she makes you sad just by looking at her. But it definitely doesn’t matter how young or old she is. Well, maybe it does matter how young she is, but I’m guilty of making sexual advancements on 15-year-olds in front of their mothers, and I’m still here, and not in jail, to talk about it.

And it doesn’t matter if you’re in a relationship, if you’ve had a girlfriend for three years, or you’re more married than Al Bundy. In fact, after getting settled in a relationship, it’s even more important that you treat every girl like she’s your girl. We don’t want girls to get all fat after getting married, so we should be just as vigilant about keeping our masculinity in shape. What’s the worst thing that can happen? Your wife gets jealous when she sees you flirting with another girl? Yeah, that’d be awful because your wife definitely won’t want to fuck you when she senses a little competition {sarcasm detector explodes}.

Sure, you can take a public speaking workshop, improve your posture, and not smile like a dork so much, and it would be way better than gabbing about periods at a Tupperware party. But like the tricep extensions of your masculinity, these weak motions are peripheral to the central issue of your masculinity—why you even have masculinity in the first place.